Module 2 Developmental Psychology (copy)

the role of early experiences on later development versus current behavior reflecting present experiences

whether or not development is best viewed as occuring in stages or as a gradual cumulative process of change

the role of heredity and the environment in shaping human behavior

proposed that the mind of the newborn is a tabula rasa “blank state”

proposed that development occurs according to innate processes and progresses through 3 stages: infancy, childhood, adolescense

known for his theory of evolution

established scientific journals for publsihing child development research, first president of the American Psychological Association

conducted quantative and experimental research on infant development

founder of the field of behaviorism

psychoanalytic approach and model of pscyhosexual development

conducted the first large-scale study of children’s behavior

stage theory of cognitive development

-proposed that the ways in which parents/caregivers interact with children have long-lasting impact on children

-suggested the first purely psychological explanation for physical problems and mental illness

-proposed that unconscious motives, desires, fears, and anxieties

Three parts to adult personality

1. Id

2. Ego

3. Super Ego

includes our instincts and drives, wants immediate gratification, the pleasure principle (something is judged good or bad depending on whether it feels good or bad)

develops during the first three years of life, the rational part of our personality, the reality principle (helps the id satisfy its desires in a realistic way), considered the self

emerges around age 5, rule-based, acts as our conscience

• A strong ego to balance the id and superego > healthy personality

• Imbalances > neurosis or a tendency to experience negative emotions

• if we do not have the proper nurturing and parenting during a stage, we will be stuck, or fixated, in that stage, even as adults

• In each stage, the child’s pleasure-seeking urges, coming from the id, are focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous

• Infant meets needs for comfort, warmth, food, and stimulation primarily through immediate oral gratification

• Inconsistent or neglectful caregiving can lead to the child becoming fixated in the oral stage, and as an adult, this person may engage in eating, drinking, smoking, nail-biting, or compulsive talking to feel comfort when afraid or insecure

• The child is learning self-control and is taught that some urges must be contained and some instructions proposed

• Anal retentive

• Anal expulsive

(fear of letting go) as a result of overly controlling caregiving; the person might be extremely neat and clean, organized, reliable, and controlling of others

as a result of the caregiver neglecting to teach the child to control urges; the person might become an adult who is messy, irresponsible, and disorganized

Consists of:

• Oedipus complex

• Castration anxiety

• Electra complex

• Penis envy

refers to a child’s unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and cared for the same-sex parent

Freud believed that the boy fears that if he pursues his mother, his father may castrate him

refers to a girl’s unconscious attraction for her father, followed by realizing she cannot compete with her mother, so she gives up that affection and learns to be more like her mother

Freud believed that the girl feels inferior because she does not have a penis

• Attention focused on family and friendships, the biological drives are temporarily quieted (latent)

• The child is able to make friends, they will gain a sense of confidence

• If not the child may continue to be a loner or shy away from others even as an adult

• A person is preoccupied with sex and reproduction

• The adolescent experiences rising hormone levels and the sex drive and hunger drives become very strong

• Ideally, according to Freud, the ego is strengthened during this stage and the adolescent uses reason to manage urges

not accepting the truth or lying to oneself

taking out frustrations on a safer target

attributing unacceptable thoughts to others

involves a cognitive distortion of “the facts” to make an event or an impulse less threatening

outwardly opposing something you inwardly desire, but that you find unacceptable

going back to a time when the world felt like a safer place, perhaps reverting to one’s childhood behaviors

pushing painful thoughts out of consciousness

transforming unacceptable urges into more socially acceptable behavior

from birth to 12 months of age, infants must learn that adults can be trusted

toddlers (ags 1-3 years) explore their world and learn that they can control their actions and act on their environment to get results

preschoolers (ages 3-6) are capable of initiating activities and asserting control over their world through social interactions and play

elementary school children (ages 7-12) either develop a sense of pride and accomplishment in their schoolwork, sports, social activities, and family life, or they feel inferior and inadequate because they believe they do not measure up

• adolescents’ (ages 12-18) main task is developing a sense of self; they explore various roles and ideas, set goals, and attempt to discover their adult selves

people in early adulthood (20s to early 40s) are concerned with developing and maintaining successful relationships with others

people in middle adulthood (40s to mid-50s) are concerned with finding their life’s work and contributing to the development of others

people in late adulthood (mid-60s to the end of life) are concerned with reflecting on their lives and feeling either a sense of pride and satisfaction or a sense of regret and failure

• Associated with Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist studying digestion

• Classical conditioning explains how we develop many of our emotional responses to people or events or our “gut-level” reactions to situations

• Before conditioning

  • Unconditioned stimulus (food) produces an unconditioned response (salivation)

• During conditioning

  • The neutral stimulus (bell) is presented just before the unconditioned stimulus (food)

• After conditioning

  • The neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (bell)

Tried to demonstrate the power of classical conditioning with his famous experiment of an 18 month old boy named Little Albert, who he conditioned to fear a white rat (which the child did not initially fear)

• sought to explain how new behaviors are learned, not just how existing behaviors are reflexively elicited (as in classical conditioning)

  • Behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior

  • In operant conditioning, we learn to associate a behavior and its consequence

• Skinner based his ideas on the law of effect

contains a lever (for rats) or disk (for pigeons) that the animal can press or peck for food reward via the dispenser

• is anything following a behavior that makes it more likely to occur again

  • Intrinsic or primary reinforcers (food or praise)

  • Secondary reinforcers (money)

Proposed that learning occurs in a social content through a dynamic reciprocal interaction of the person, their own behavior, and the environment

The interplay between our personality and the way we interpret events and how they influence us

Individuals can learn novel responses by watching the key behavior or others

are typically of higher status or authority compared to the observer, such as parents and teachers

• Attention: one must pay attention to what they are observing in order to learn

• Retention: to learn one must be able to retain the behavior they are observing in memory

• Initiation: the learner must be able to execute (or initiate) the learned behavior

• Motivation: needed to engage in observational learning

• Vicarious reinforcement occurs when people’s behavior is influenced by observing social models receive reinforcement or punishment

• When faces with something new, a child may either fit it into an existing framework (schema) and match it with something known (assimilation) or expand the schema to accommodate the new citation (accomodation) by learning new words and concepts

• The underlying dynamic of cognition

  • To determine whether new information fits into our old way of thinking or whether we need to modify our thoughts

• Object permanence: the understanding that even if something is out of sight, it still exists, develops between 5 and 8 months old

• Stranger anxiety: a fear of unfamilar people

• Preoperaitonal children have not develped conservation

• Egocentrism: the child is not able to take the perspective of others

• Theory of Mind: understanding that people have different thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from one’s own

• Children also master the concept of conservation

• Children understand the principle of reversability

A renewed egocentrism occurs in adolesence

Many developmental psychologists suggest a fifth stage of cognitive development, known as the postformal stage wherein decisions are made based on circumstance, and logic is integrated with emotion as adults develop principles that depend on contexts

• Attention mechanisms for bringing information in

• Working Memory for actively manipulating information

• Long-Term Memory for passively holding information so that it can be used in the future

The scientific field that studies the biological processes that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections and activity in the brain that are involved in mental processes (ex. Problem solving)

Examines interrelations between brain changes and changes in cognitive ability as children grow up, as well as environmental and biological influences on the developing mind and brain

• Emphasized the importance of the selfactualizing tendency in shaping personality

• Humans are constantly reacting to stimuli with their subjective reality (phenomenal field)

• Over time, a person develops a self-concept (i.e., our thoughts and feelings about ourselves) based on feedback from this field of reality

-- Ideal self: the person that you would like to be

-- Real self: the person you actually are

• Congruity how closely one’s real self matches up with the ideal self

• Our self-concept is accurate when we experience congruence

• High congruence leads to a greater sense of self-worth and a healthy, productive life

• Incongruence: when there is a great discrepancy between our ideal and actual selves, which leads to maladjustment

• Parents can help their children achieve their ideal self by giving them unconditional positive regard or unconditional love in an environment that is free of preconceived notions of value and worth

• The Good Life: when a fully functioning person continually aims to fulfill their potential and demonstrate the following traits/tendencies:

1. Existential Lifestyle: living each moment fully

2. A rich, full life: experiencing joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage more intensely

• An american psychologist best known for proposing that a hierarchy of human needs motivates behavior

• Goal is to attain self actualization

• Contextual Perspective: considers the relationships between individuals and the physical, cognitive, personality, social, cultural, and environmental influences on the development

1. Guided Participation: a learner actively acquires new culturally valuable skills and capabilities through a meaningful, collaborative activity with an assisting, more experienced person

2. Scaffolding: teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering support as needed

3. Zone of Proximal Development, the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they cannot do

• The qualities of a child and their environment interact to influence how they will grow and develop

• Ecological: a natural environment stresses the importance of studying a child in the context of multiple environments

• Renamed theory to biocological model to recognize the importance of biological processes in development

• Chronosystem: the relevant historical context and time frame in which all development occurs

seeks to identify behavior that is the result of our genetic inheritance from our ancestors

• a theoretical approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological structure from a modern evolutionary perspective

• It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations or the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection in human evolution

• imprinting is any kind of phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior.

• he investigated the principle of imprinting, the process by which some nidifugous birds (i.e., birds that leave their nest early) bond instinctively with the first moving object that they see within the first hours of hatching.

a field of scientific research that uses genetic methods to investigate the nature and origins of individual differences in behavior and studies the effects of heredity on behavior

drawing on several perspectives simultaneously since the same developmental phenomenon can be viewed from a number of perspectives

• Microsystem: parents and siblings with a direct significant impact

• Mesosystem: schools, extended family, religion

• Exosystem: community values, history, economy

• Macrosystem: cultural elements, global economic conditions, war, and technology trends

• Chronosystem: larger historical context and timeframe